A group of seven humans were walking in the direction of the medical building in Silver Oak University. Two of them were injured with gauze wrapped around a neck and forearm. This group was Sylas's ragtag party. They decided to head back the direction they came from to rest for a few minutes. They needed to get away from where they fought in case the noise attracted others with ill intents.
After walking a couple minutes, Sylas spotted an alleyway was closed in and backed up to a dumpster. He chose there to set up camp for a few minutes to try and heal their wounds enough that they wouldn't easily open if they were forced to fight. After getting settled down and leaving Professor Medina on lookout, Sylas had everyone look at the rewards from the previous fight.
[You have assisted with the hunting of level 4 [Mutt].] x2
[You have assisted with the hunting of level 5 [Mutt].]
[You have assisted with the hunting of level 6 [Mutt].]
[You have leveled up to level 5.]
Sylas was surprised by the messages saying he assisted with the other mutts. He hadn't harmed them during the fight as he was solely focused on the pack alpha. Thinking about it for a few minutes he came to the conclusion that he assisted with his new skill [Bossy Words] Giving a buff to his teammates who then fought should've counted him as assisting them. Satisfied with the explanation he came up with, Sylas continued going through the notifications.
[You have received an item reward from the hunting of level 6 [Mutt]. Would you like to receive it? Yes/No]
While thinking about why anyone would say no, he selected [Yes]. A small ball of light started glowing in his hand, increasing in radiance until the light suddenly disappeared. What was left in his hand was a deep black stick that looked like it was rotting. Hoping it wasn't trash, Sylas used [Analyze] to get the stats of the item.
[Rotting Wand]
[Grade: Uncommon]
[+1 Intelligence]
[Allows user to cast Rotting Bolt]
[Rotting Bolt]
[A bolt of rot that causes the target to rot. Slowly deals damage over time (DoT) and reduces healing effects. Damage calculated using the user's Intelligence.]
Sam, who was sitting next to him, also took a look at the wand. She touched it and recoiled saying "That feels disgusting." Seeing Sylas reach out and touch the same part that she just had, Sam clarified "It wasn't that the physical touch was gross." She paused to think for a moment "It… It felt disgusting in my body. Like my entire being was rejecting the wand."
Sylas contemplated while focusing on the feeling of the [Rotting Wand]. To him it was emanating a cool aura and softer springy feeling like rotting wood when touched. Wanting to test it, he tossed the wand to Swain, who was fine for the first moment, but started frowning soon after. A few seconds later he tossed the wand back to Sylas.
"It didn't feel disgusting at first, but the longer I held it the more uneasy I felt. At the end, I had a kind of sinister feeling and it was certainly coming from the wand."
"Hmm. I thought it may have caused a reaction with Sam because it reduces healing and she's spent her entire life healing others, but if you feel it too, even if not at the same level, then it can't only be that reason. What makes me different from you guys?"
Sylas was more so talking to himself out loud than to the others, although he would accept helpful input from them. Instead he got insults repeatedly: You're in worse shape, you're lazy, you probably smell bad, maybe you're alike because you rot away in your room playing videogames, you always end up on the floor after fights, you -
"Damn guys! Okay, I get it. So much for being my wife and best friend. Okay, then, enough about me. What did you guys get from that?"
The three of them chuckled before Sam spoke up first. "I didn't get anything really. I just leveled up to level 4. No skills or items this time."
Swain had the same results, but getting up to level 5 from level 4.
"I leveled up to level 1." A quiet voice came from beside them as they were settling into a lull. They looked over to see it was Diana that spoke up. Sylas remembered her running into the fight to try and help him when the alpha had him pinned down. He gave her a smile and thanked her for her help.
"Not just anyone could have run into a fight like that to help. Thank you for being willing to put yourself in danger to help me."
Diana shyly looked down at her feet muttering "It probably didn't even do anything to help." But Sylas just chuckled and told her it didn't matter how much of an impact it had since he was alive and she tried.
A scoff came from several feet away and was followed by a mutter that was too quiet for to hear, but Sylas swore he heard something that rhymed with that woman's name. She was, of course, Cam Fitch. Sylas decided to ignore her and instead got up to walk over to the dumpster. He wanted to test his new wand to see what the [Rotting Bolt] was like.
When he got to the dumpster he looked inside for targets ignoring the stench that permeated his nose. He found a box that was full of apples, ripped a piece of a garbage bag off, and scooped a bug into the box of apples. This way he had two somewhat living and two inanimate test subjects to see how the rot affected different things.
He started with the bug. It was some kind of beetle looking bug, Sylas wasn't sure since he never had an interest in insects. He aimed the wand at the beetle crawling away and intended the wand to shoot at it. He felt a warmth start to circulate throughout his body starting at his stomach, swirling through his shoulder, arm, hand, and then into the wand. When the warm current subsided the wand released a greenish black blob that quickly shot through the air and hit the beetle.
The beetle quickly stopped moving and appeared to have died. Sylas bent down to observe closer and noticed one of the legs had fallen off. Curious, he reached out to pick up the beetle, but it crumbled in his hand when he touched it. It was as if it was rotting away at a fast pace. He wondered if the rot was that effective because the beetle was so small, the power difference was too big, or maybe it didn't have any mana in its body to defend against the rot since he hadn't gotten a notification saying he had killed anything.
He decided to test the apple next. He felt the warmth start to flow out of his stomach area again. Sylas had decided that the warmth he was feeling had to be mana as it was the same warmth as he had felt after hunting and at the beginning of the Integration. The rot bolt shot out infecting the apple. Sylas watched in real time as the red skin started paling then turning brown in spots and those spots grew by the second. After around twenty seconds, the apple core was visible because the skin and flesh had rotted away. Another minute later and there were no longer any remnants left of the apple.
Sylas compared the process of the apple rotting with the beetle. The apple had taken longer, but was it because of the difference in size, or maybe the apple had absorbed some mana and that was fighting off the rot. With the difference in size thought in mind, he ripped one of the sides of the cardboard box off. This way he could hit the same material, but of different sizes, at the same time and see if the total mass of the object made a difference. He shot a bolt at the majority of the box and then about a second later shot another one at the side he ripped off.
The cooldown of each shot was about a second. Sylas didn't know if he could speed it up at some point or if it was the limitation of the wand, but he wasn't too focused on that right now. Instead he was thinking about how tired he felt. With the first two shots to the beetle and apple he hadn't much of a drain, but with the third and then rapid fourth shot, Sylas had felt an immense drain. He concluded it was his mana draining from each skill cast and that he only had a couple more shots at most before he was exhausted.
He focused on the cardboard pieces after a few seconds to see the box was rotting away. Looking at the side he tore off, he saw it was rotting away at the same pace, but it wasn't proportional between the cardboard items. They were both rotting away at what looked like a 1 inch by 1 inch square per second so they were rotting at the same speed but the mostly whole box would take longer to fully rot away as it was larger. So the size did play a part in the observable effects of the skill.
Feeling tired from the multiple skill uses, Sylas threw the piece of plastic garbage bag back into the dumpster and sat down next to Sam again. Pulling her in, he leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes and drifting off.